The present invention relates to managing and processing massive amounts of information regarding virtually each and every participant in today's economy. A significant part of today's economy relies on information provided by information suppliers, those who gather and process raw data and provide processed information regarding an economic entity to information buyers. As an example, an information supplier gathers data regarding a consumer and sells processed information to an information buyer. An information buyer uses the processed information to identify potential customers of its products and to shape and target its marketing strategies. Examples of information buyers include credit companies, retailers, manufacturers and service providers.
An information supplier provides information according to criteria specified by an information buyer. One information buyer may only need addresses and names of its potential customers. Another information buyer may wish to know the type of food and clothing a potential customer prefers, in addition to the customer's name and address. A third information buyer may wish to know the potential customer's marital status, income and assumed debts.
Traditional methods of supplying processed information are labor intensive and require tremendous processing capability and time. In general, traditional methods involve a step of comparing the content of an information buyer's customer file to the content in the information supplier's file. Comparing data contents requires a batch processing and presents a substantially difficult task. Information about a particular person is often captured in various forms, requiring various steps to standardize an information buyer's customer file. For example, even a person's name may have been entered in the customer's files in three or four different ways. In addition, the amount of information available regarding an individual exploded with advancements made in computer and information technologies, presenting a daunting amount of information to be handled and managed.
Traditional methods also often fragmented databases of an information buyer according to the buyer's business units and geographical locations of the buyer's sub-units. In other words, an information buyer's customer file was often stored in a fragmented way, thereby preventing the information buyer from having an integrated view of its customers. A corporation cannot provide the most efficient services to its customers when it only has fragmented views of its customers and cannot access all information it has regarding a particular customer. For example, a regular customer of a corporation does not regard the corporation based on its different business units and is likely to be frustrated when a unit of the corporation cannot access the customer's file when the customer has been dealing for a number of years with another unit of the corporation.
In addition, new digital infrastructures such as the Internet and wireless communications brought about capability to distribute information in an amazing speed to almost every location on the globe. Accordingly, customers of information buyers expect high quality services in near real-time. In turn, information buyers expect information suppliers to deliver high quality information in near real-time. At the same time, the digital revolution brought about vast capability to gather astounding amounts of information regarding every economically active person, either natural or legal. Information buyers expect information suppliers to be able to gather, process and deliver enormous amounts of information in near real-time.
An information supplier such as Acxiom Corporation (“Acxiom”) attempts to meet the challenges in the digital age by using a plurality of persistent keys that link the record entries of information buyers with the record entries in its central database. U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,140 assigned to Acxiom, which patent is incorporated herein by this reference, discloses an open system in which an information buyer's databases are updated using a plurality of persistent keys and version numbers. A version number associated with a persistent key is updated each time the content in Acxiom's central database associated with the persistent key is updated. An information buyer's database becomes updated when the buyer's version number differs from the version number in Acxiom's central database with respect to the same persistent key.